Iketara iku (行けたら行く): I will go if I can. In 2020, the columnist Fukazume quoted a reader from the Kansai region in the women’s weekly Josei Seven: Kotchi de wa “iketara iku” wa kesseki no imi desu. Hontō ni kitara bikkuri shimasu. “Here, ‘I’ll go if I can’ means absence. If someone really comes, we are surprised.”
A 2023 etiquette article on Mynavi News advises against such vague answers. A person who wants to decline, it says, makes a better impression by declining clearly.
Okosan, piano jōzu ni naraharimashita nā (お子さん、ピアノ上手にならはりましたなぁ): your child has become good at the piano. In Kyoto, this is said to be a neighbor’s way of asking for the playing to stop.
Hiroi ouchi de sodachihatta n ya nē (広いお家で育ちはったんやねぇ): you must have grown up in a big house. Said to mean that a voice is too loud.
The news site J-CAST gave both examples in 2025.
A study published in 2016 in a bulletin of Hiroshima University examined how speakers reach agreement in discussion. When native speakers of Japanese gave a negative response, they used demo or kedo, but, only once, and almost no other connecting words. They often delayed their responses instead. The study suggests that they delayed in order to prompt the other person to adjust their opinion.
In one example from the study, a native speaker softens a rejection with nanka, a filler, and a pause, and then proposes an alternative instead of stating the disagreement.
Japanese companies reject job applicants in set phrases. A typical message reads: Makoto ni zannen nagara, konkai wa go-kitai ni soenai kekka to narimashita. We are very sorry, but this time the result does not meet your expectations. It almost always ends with a line such as Kongo no katsuyaku o oinori itashimasu, we pray for your success in the future.
Job seekers call these messages oinori mēru, prayer emails.
A Japanese wedding invitation comes with a reply card. A guest who cannot attend marks the card for absence and adds a short reason.
If the real reason is a death in the family, wedding guides advise against writing it. The guest writes tsugō ga tsukazu, it could not be arranged, or yamu o enai jijō ni yori, due to unavoidable circumstances. One guide says that the right answer is to keep it thoroughly vague. The real reason can be told later, by telephone.
Chotto… (ちょっと…): a little… A sentence left unfinished, as in Sono hi wa chotto…, that day is a little…
A Japanese study of refusals calls such forms iisashi, sentences left unfinished. It explains that leaving the end of the sentence unsaid keeps one’s opinion from striking the other person directly. Among the unfinished forms in the study, chotto stood out as especially frequent.
Aizuchi are the short responses a Japanese listener gives while another person speaks. Japanese linguists describe one type as used “without expressing a judgment of yes or no, simply to mean ‘I am listening’ or ‘I understand.'”
A study published at Ochanomizu University sums up the basic function of aizuchi as “a sign that one is listening.”
Muzukashii desu ne (難しいですね): that is difficult. A common way to refuse a request politely without saying no.
Maemuki ni kentō shimasu (前向きに検討します): we will consider it positively. Sometimes used to avoid an immediate answer or to decline gently. It is not a promise.
Kekkō desu (結構です): that is fine. It can mean acceptance or refusal, depending on the situation.
A study at Hitotsubashi University describes a meeting between Prime Minister Satō Eisaku and President Richard Nixon. Shaking hands, Satō clearly promised Nixon that Japan would restrain its textile exports to the United States by the end of the year. Satō later said that there was no paper, and that he had never promised anything concrete, even orally.
A popular version of the story says that Satō answered zensho shimasu (I will deal with it appropriately), and that Nixon took this as a commitment. No source for that wording was found.